


friends should sleep in other beds

by mrsgryffindor



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drunk Keith (Voltron), Drunk Lance (Voltron), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Keith & Lance (Voltron) are Roommates, M/M, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), and they were ROOMMATES, but we love them, keith and lance are stupid idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 22:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18019931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsgryffindor/pseuds/mrsgryffindor
Summary: Being in love with his best friend was a bit like dying, Keith decided as he took his fifth vodka shot of the night.....In which Keith is a pining disaster, Lance is clueless, and it takes a little nudging from friends to get things straightened out.





	friends should sleep in other beds

Being in love with his best friend was a bit like dying, Keith decided as he took his fifth vodka shot of the night. 

The club was packed -- it was Fourth of July weekend after all, and this was Texas. Keith didn’t even know that this much red, white, and blue attire existed until he and Lance had stepped into the establishment an hour or so earlier, already buzzed on cheap beer that they had pregamed with before arriving.

Lance had pitched this debacle as a “guys night.” Keith had only agreed to go because it meant spending time with Lance, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best of ideas. It never was, and Lance had proven to be well, Lance when he ditched Keith the second he spotted a girl in sequined Daisy-Dukes.

Maybe this was for the best. It was high time that Keith got over Lance anyway. It had been all of college after all, and that phase of his life was over now. He had a degree, a possible job lined up, and it was time to become a real adult and start pursuing people actually interested in him instead of pining over his former roommate.

There were glimmers of hope, sometimes -- like that time Keith had come home to their dorm room practically in tears because he had officially failed Organic Chemistry for the second time in a row, and Lance laid with him and pet his hair for hours. Or all the times they held hands and never spoke about it. Of course, the Christmas party last year, when Lance got blackout drunk and made out with Keith in his kitchen. There was so much there that Keith’s head spun just thinking about it.

He and Lance lived in this bizarre will-they-or-won’t-they limbo, except Lance was only not-straight when he wants to be, and this was probably all in Keith’s head.

“You just going to stare all night or are you going to ask him out?”

Keith hadn’t even realized he’d been staring at Lance until he looked up to face the bartender.

“I-I’m not… It’s not like that.” Keith stammered out, and she scoffed, pouring him one more shot.

“This one’s on me,” she started, pushing the glass towards him, “Drink up and go talk to him.”

Wordlessly, Keith took the shot, and his face scrunched up as it always did with the taste. He hadn’t even realized how drunk he was until he slid off the bar stool and felt the world spin as he turned his head to look for Lance.  
That’s when he spotted him, in the corner, kissing the girl with the sequin shorts. Keith’s gut dropped to the floor, like it did every single time this happened. This was supposed to be their night, just him and Lance.

Well, he was just leaving anyway.

Keith waded through the mess of people and finally reached the exit, breathing in the warm summer air when he finally reached the outside. He pulled out his phone and fumbled with it, too drunk to read the words on the screen. He cursed as he searched for the Uber symbol amongst his apps.

“Keith!”

Slowly, Keith turned to the source of the voice to find Lance standing at the doorway. His hair was messed up, presumably from the sequin shorts girl, and he wore a goofy smile on his face. In a brief drunken instant, Keith realized how fucked he was.

Keith needed to be literally anywhere but here.

Despite that, Lance moved closer and put a hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith should have froze, turned away, done something, but instead he stayed, stared at the taller boy’s face, and wished to himself that he could muster up the strength to close the distance between them.

“I love you.” Keith hadn’t realized he was going to say it until it came tumbling out his mouth. In that moment, Keith would give ten years off his life to take back those words.

Lance smiled, and slung an arm around Keith’s shoulder. Keith’s heart was teetering on stopping at this moment.

“I love you too! You’re the best friend a guy could ask for.”

Oh.

Keith couldn’t help but release a small laugh at everything that just occured, and he turned away, feeling tears prick at his eyes. How could he be this stupid?  


“Uber’s here, buddy.”

………

The first thing Keith registered when he woke up was the fact that someone was holding him. He blinked a couple of times and immediately recognized the room he was in: Lance’s. Which could only mean one thing.

As carefully as he could, Keith rolled over to find the sleeping figure of his best friend. His mouth was wide open and he was drooling, and even snoring a little bit, but he had never been more beautiful.

_I could wake up to this for the rest of my life._

Keith shot straight up in bed with this thought. He needed to leave.

“It’s so early.” Lance grumbled next to him, and he opened his eyes blearily.

“It’s noon.” Keith responded, and sat at the edge of the bed, scanning the room for his belongings. It was only then that he realized he wasn’t wearing any pants either. God, he could just fucking die right now.

“Keeeeeeeeith, come back to bed. You’re so warm.” Lance whined, weakly reaching out for Keith.

This wasn’t normal. Friends didn’t do this -- or did they? Was this all just in Keith’s head because he wanted this to happen so badly? Was he crazy?

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Keith snapped, turning to look Lance in the eye. “For once in your _goddamned life_ would you think before you say something?” Lance sat up, suddenly awake and stared at him in stunned silence as Keith gathered his things. Just before leaving, Keith paused in the threshold. He had nothing left to lose.

“You know how I said that I loved you last night? I meant every word.”

………

“And then he just _fucking left._ Guys. Guys! Are you even paying attention?” Lance yelled to his friends Pidge and Hunk, who sat adjacent to him on the couch, both with eyes glued to their phones.

Lance had spent the last thirty minutes re-telling the events of the night before, much to the dismay of his friends. Pidge and Hunk were no strangers to Keith and Lance drama, and they had very much had read the writing on the wall before Lance -- hell, everybody had. While Lance had offhandedly mentioned some pretty gay shit about Keith before, Lance had somehow successfully managed to dance around the topic of actually doing anything about it for years.

Pidge looked up from their phone, obviously disgruntled.

“So he’s in love with you.” They stated, and Lance vigorously nodded in response, his expression painted with duress. Hunk gave a small laugh from next to them.

“Didn’t you say, not even a week ago, that when you and Keith went to the beach that he was ‘out there looking like a snack?’” Hunk replied.

“What about that time that time that they held hands when we all watched Mamma Mia?”

“Or when Keith made Lance’s bed every day for a semester?”

“The Christmas party--”

“--Okay, okay enough!” Lance yelled over them, face beet red, “I get it, I fucking get it. We’re weird best friends.”

“No, you’re gay best friends.” Pidge retorted.

“What we’re trying to tell you, Lance, is to accept the obvious here. You haven’t dated anyone since you met Keith. Every time you get drunk you’re all over him; hell, you’re all over him when you’re sober too. He’s all you talk about. For Christ’s sake, he’s your phone background.” Hunk said, exasperated.

Hunk’s words hung in the air for a few moments as Lance took them in. 

Sure, Lance had never been shy about being into guys with Pidge and Hunk, but he had never told his friends about his feelings for Keith -- the way his stomach dropped when Keith walked into a room, the irresistible urge to be as close to Keith as possible whenever they were together, the way he couldn’t imagine a future without him. 

“Oh god, I’m in love with him, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” Pidge and Hunk responded in unison. A shit eating grin was painted across Pidge’s face, and Hunk looked the most relieved Lance had ever seen him.

Lance stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. He had to fix this, oh god, oh god, oh god. He had to make it up to Keith, somehow.

“I should go over there.”

“No.” Hunk said and Pidge nodded in agreement.

“We’ll go and talk to him.”

………

It had been two days -- two very long days of replaying waking up at Lance’s place over and over in Keith’s mind to the point of near insanity. He had really, really thought that being around Lance when he was in love with him was like dying. But this was a new level of terrible. Now that the cat was out of the bag, Keith had played out every possible scenario that might happen from here on, and almost every single one ended with Lance never talking to him again -- and that, _that_ was a fate worse than death.

There was a knock at the door. Keith’s brother, Shiro, had been in and out of his apartment these past few days, bringing meals and making sure Keith was at least a semi-functional human being.

While Keith had never told Shiro about his thing for Lance, (hell, he hadn’t told anyone), Shiro was no fool, and knew at least that something had happened three days ago to cause Keith to go completely catatonic. Keith had a feeling that Shiro knew it was about Lance too, partially because Shiro had been asking him about where Lance was during all of this, and partially because Keith learned a long time ago that Shiro knows everything.

Needless to say, Keith was a little more than confused when instead of his older brother on his doorstep, he found Pidge and Hunk, Lance’s closest friends (next to him, of course), there instead.

“Umm, hello--”

Pidge and Hunk pushed past him and burst into his living room.

“This place is literally just as I imagined it.” Pidge said after a few moments of examining their surroundings, and Hunk exchanged a few glances with them.

“Why are you here?” Keith finally asks.

“We come on behalf of Lance.” Hunk starts. Keith let out a long sigh and sat down on his couch, burying his head in his hands.

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“We know you’re in love with him.” Pidge retorted. Keith snapped his head towards them, an expression of terror painting his face.  
“Come on, man. You’re not that subtle.”

“We’re just friends--”

“Friends don’t make out in the pantry during Christmas parties, Keith.” Hunk replied, and Keith fell in a stunned silence. After a few moments, he returned his head to his hands and nodded.

“Lance is pretty broken up about this too. That’s why he sent us.”

Keith perked up. While he had thought he had explored every possible avenue in this situation, he had never once considered that Lance himself would be anything less than angry in this whole predicament.

“He what--”

Pidge sighed, and turned to Hunk, “See, I told you he would be dumb about all this.”

Hunk laughed in response and shrugged.

“Listen man, all I’m going to say is that Lance is my best friend too. And he’s not exactly un-fond of you, if you know what I’m saying?”

“No I don’t--” Keith started, but was interrupted by Pidge’s finger shushing him.

“What Hunk is trying to say is that Lance has a huge fucking crush on you too. Now, please take that information and do something with it. I’m tired watching you two play the ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ game.”

Keith’s brain short circuited. Not only was the best friend that he had been slowly falling in love with for over three years not straight, he was was not straight for _him._

Their work done, Hunk and Pidge headed for the door. Before exiting, Hunk pulled Keith in for a tight hug, and Pidge reluctantly joined after some encouragement. 

Then they were gone, as quickly as they came.

………

They weren’t always this close. On move in day freshman year, Lance managed to dent a hole in the wall of their dorm, played horrible pop music as he unpacked for three hours, and had his friends Hunk and Pidge over, giving Keith only moment’s notice before they arrived. Later that night he and Lance got into their first argument of many, and they shouted so loud at one another that the RA, Allura, had to swing by and diffuse the situation.

Lance, competitive by nature, quickly made everything a rivalry between them. Keith and Lance had the same major, Aerospace Engineering, and therefore mostly had the same classes. Every test, every assignment was a challenge between the two of them, and even though Lance studied harder than Keith, and put in a hell of lot more effort than he did, Keith still managed to score higher than him every single time. This drove Lance up the wall.

There was also the problem with the parties. Keith wasn’t a party guy, not by any stretch of the imagination, but their tiny two person dorm quickly became a hotspot for Friday and Saturday night parties. Probably out of spite, Lance would never tell Keith that the parties were happening until people arrived at their dorm, and Keith wound up having to leave their room most nights and sleep on one of the couches in the library.

It got to the point that two weeks before finals week, Keith had started the room transfer process. He had found a new roommate, and was in the process of packing up his stuff when Keith received the worst phone call of his life -- his Dad had been in an accident with a driver that was intoxicated twice the legal limit.

Panicked, Keith scrambled to try and find someone to drive him to the hospital (his own car, Red, had crapped out a month ago), when Lance walked in and saw how much of a disaster he was. In an instant, Lance offered to drive Keith and they rushed to the hospital. Lance stayed the whole night with Keith, and Keith’s dad died the next morning.

After that, things changed between them. Lance went to the wake with Keith, and for the first time, Keith appreciated Lance’s company. He made fast friends with his brother, Shiro, who was able to return from his deployment in Afghanistan briefly for the funeral service. When he returned to school that next semester, Keith spent most of his time in bed, stuck in a fog of grief that he refused to acknowledge. Lance stepped up to the plate in a way that Keith never thought was possible -- the parties stopped, Lance brought him meals, and he even handed in his homework and forged his signature on the attendance sheet on the days Keith didn’t have it in him to go to class. Lance did this all wordlessly, and mostly without thanks.

The springtime came, and as the season changed, Keith’s grief lifted a little. On the advice of Lance, he finally went to the school’s counseling center. Lance would drag him out of bed and make him go on walks with him every now and again. Keith slowly regained function.

They became inseparable. Keith tutored Lance in their engineering classes, and soon Lance was pulling higher scores than Keith. They stayed up all night talking to one another about anything and everything, learning more about the other as time wore on. By the time the semester was over, Lance invited Keith to spend the summer at his place, so he wouldn’t have to be alone for four months. Keith happily accepted.

Four years later, nothing changed between the two of them except for the fact that their bond grew stronger with every passing day -- well, until now, that is. For the first time in years, they didn’t text every day. Lance quickly missed the memes they would send one another, missed Keith’s commentary on his day. He just missed Keith. They were ever present beings in the other’s life, and one could not imagine life without the other.

Lance lay awake, thinking about this, and everything about Keith for that matter. This whole conundrum was very literally keeping him up at night, and he wished he had the perfect solution to this problem, wished he just had the right words to say.

So he started thinking of them.

………

_Lance likes you._

Keith’s brain had been chanting this fact over and over in his head from the moment that Pidge and Hunk had left until well, now. He paced across his living room for what seemed like forever, wracking his brain about what the _fuck_ he was supposed to do with this information. More than anything, he wanted to march straight over to Lance’s place and kiss the everloving shit out of him, but Keith had doubts. This just felt too good to be true, he had wanted this for so long, but he wouldn’t truly believe it until he heard it straight from Lance himself. But how the fuck was he supposed to get that out of him?

Then he heard the honking.

Snapping out of his inner monologue, Keith went to the window to investigate, and sure enough, there was Lance’s beat up blue Toyota Camry parked in his complex’s parking lot, honking away. Keith searched for his phone to fire off a text to Lance to tell him to stop, when he heard a knock on his door instead. His stomach dropped.

Hesitantly, Keith opened his door, and Lance brushed past him immediately. He opened his mouth to say something, but Lance was already speaking, “I’m sorry man, I’m so, so sorry.”

Keith stared at Lance, a mixture of absolute adoration and frustration rising in him. Lance had dragged him through the mud for so long about this, but on the upside, at least he wasn’t leading him on the whole time. Still, anger prickled at his skin.

“Give me one good reason I should forgive you.”

Lance only smiled and moved closer, gently grabbing Keith’s hand. He looked up at Keith with the goofiest grin on his face, with his signature Lance smile. Keith’s heart swelled.

“Because I love you.”

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Lance’s face fell.

“Wait, I thought--”

“I do. I love you too. So, so much. But, it’s just…” Keith’s voice trailed off, and Lance tried to take his hand again but this time Keith swatted it away.

“Just what, Keith?”

“Just… Why didn’t you tell me earlier, if you’re so sure you’re in love with me now?” Keith said, finally looking up at Lance.

“I didn’t realize until now, it’s as simple as that.”  


Keith let out a laugh, “You didn’t _realize? _Jesus Christ Lance, you’ve got to be fucking with me right now.”__

____

____

____

____

“Wait, what--” 

“God Lance, _think_ about your actions for once in your goddamn life! I never told you about my feelings because I was convinced you only weren’t straight exclusively when you were drunk. I thought I was crazy for so long. How do I know this is real?” Keith snapped, tears pricking his eyes. He turned away. 

A long silence fell upon Keith’s apartment. For once in his life, Lance was speechless. 

After a few moments, Lance finally spoke, “Keith, I’m so sorry. For all of this. Believe me though, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. I really do love you, it’s something I’ve known deep down for a really long time but never was able to articulate. I really can’t imagine my life without you. You’re my best friend, and so much more.” 

Keith turned back to face Lance. In that moment, Keith felt the familiar ache of love bloom in his chest one more time, and the more he thought about it, he knew he wanted to kiss Lance, sleep next to him, get brunch with him every Sunday morning until the day he died. Keith had never been so certain about anything in his life. He wanted to be more mad, find a reason to make this less real, but he couldn’t. This was it. His lips were on Lance’s in an instant. 

They stayed like that for a while, kissing each other tenderly. Finally they pulled apart, both breathing heavily. 

“That was excellent.” Lance said, cupping Keith’s face in his hand. He leaned into Lance’s touch and nodded. 

“I love you.” Keith said giddly, and Lance laughed. 

“Gross.” 

Keith rolled his eyes, and kissed Lance again. And again, and again. 

………

**Three Years Later**

The novelty of waking up to Lance every morning never wore off for Keith. They had moved in together just under six months ago, and in that time they really began acting like an old married couple: picking out curtains together, arguing about doing dishes, even adopted a dog together. Keith wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lance roused, stretching his arms and yawning. He looked over at Keith with bleary eyes and smiled, placing a short kiss on the other boy’s lips.

“I could wake up to this for the rest of my life.” Lance murmured.

“You should.”

Keith had bought a ring pretty much as soon as they moved in, but had been wracking his brain on how to ask Lance to marry him. Lance had always loved grand gestures, crying at the end of every rom-com when the main characters made up using a flash mob or something. Keith was not a grand gesture kind of guy. Every idea he had about how to ask just seemed stupid. He did not want to show up their apartment with a boombox.

But this moment was perfect. This was it.

Lance’s breathing hitched, and he began to tear up as Keith pulled the false bottom out of his nightstand (thanks Nifty for the tutorial), and he grabbed the ring box.

“No way.” Lance said, his voice cracking.

“Yes way.” Keith smiled. Lance wiped away a stray tear. Keith took a deep breath.

“If you told me that I would be doing this on move-in day freshman year, I would have laughed in your face.” Keith started, and Lance laughed.

“Good start.”

“Shut up.” Keith said, and continued, “If you told me I’d be doing this on the last day of freshman year, I wouldn’t have believed you either. I was so in love with you, but never believed this would happen. But life has a pretty funny way of working sometimes, and here I am waking up to someone I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without. In a way, I knew I would be doing this one day from the start. It was really just a matter of time. So, Lance McClain, what do you say?”

Lance, full on Kim Kardashian ugly crying at this point, nodded and wrapped Keith into a tight embrace. Keith released a relieved sigh. He had been waiting for this moment for so long. He wasn’t crazy, this romance wasn’t something he had dreamt up, not anymore. Lance just needed time.

Now all they had was time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This fic has been in the works for so long and I'm glad to finally get it posted. I hope you enjoyed these beautiful gay disasters, I sure did.


End file.
